Crypto: Coinbase Unveils Crypto Wallets Designed Specifically For AI Agents

Users can set controls and permissions to allow the AI agent to manage liquidity positions and execute trades at any time of day, Coinbase said.

Coinbase has launched crypto wallet infrastructure that allows AI agents — programs that can think and transact without human input — to spend, earn and trade crypto.

In a post on Wednesday, Coinbase programmers Erik Reppel and Josh Nickerson said the new Agentic Wallets feature aims to build on today’s agents, which can answer questions, summarize documents, and assist with tasks, but can’t execute trades or orders on behalf of users.

“The next generation of agents won't just advise — they'll act,” the pair said, adding that AI agents will be able to do everything from monitoring decentralized finance positions and rebalancing portfolios to paying for compute and API access and participating in creator economies.

Reppel and Nickerson said Agentic Wallets build on Coinbase’s AgentKit framework, introduced in November 2024, which enabled developers to embed wallets into agents.

The agents can transact via Coinbase’s x402, a purpose-built payments protocol for autonomous AI use cases that has already reportedly seen 50 million transactions.

Through x402, “Agents acquire API keys, purchase compute, access premium data streams, and pay for storage – all autonomously, creating truly self-sustaining machine economies,” the programmers said.

Reppel and Nickerson said agents would be able to operate on the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, “Managing positions and executing strategies wherever the opportunities exist.”

Lightning Labs, the team behind the Bitcoin layer-2 Lightning Network, also released a new toolset on Wednesday that enables AI agents to transact on Lightning using the L402 protocol standard.

The AI agents can also run a Lightning node and manage a Lightning wallet containing native Bitcoin (BTC) without access to the private keys.

Source: CoinTelegraph